• +Steve Hackett: Horizons
  +Nicolo Sanguinazzo: Partita di Gavote sopra un Basso für Cello & Bc
  +Johann Sebastian Bach / Alfredo Piatti: Gigue aus Cellosuite Nr. 1 für Cello & Klavier
  +Pancho Ragonese: Aparecidos
  +Domenico Galli: Sonata II da "Trattenimento Musicale sopra il Violoncello"
  +Giovanni Sollima: Jook-urr-pa
  +Johann Sebastian Bach / Robert Schumann: Gigue aus der Cellosuite Nr. 3 für Cello & Klavier
  +John Gunn: Logan Water aus "40 Favorite Scotch Air"
  +Luigi Forino: Prayer on the Prelude of the IV. Suite by J. S. Bach für Celloquartett
  +Johann Sebastian Bach / Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: VI Suite D-Dur für Cello & Streicher
  +Umberto Pedraglio: Allemanda

Every renowned cellist faces the Everest of his repertoire at some point, the solo cello suites by J. S. Bach. For Giovanni Sollima, this was a work he worked on for many years, as he explains in the introduction to his booklet. Like so many musicians, he suddenly had free time on his hands during the pandemic, and this space for reflection and study allowed him to deepen his relationship with the music he has known for decades.

In doing so, he discovered a new perspective on it by playing all six suites on the cello piccolo, for which Bach probably wrote the Sixth. This is an obsolete five-stringed instrument of a size between a viola and a standard cello. With his background in historically informed performance practice, he opted for gut strings and a pitch of A = 415 Hz: a semitone lower than the modern standard tuning of A = 440 Hz.

"I am looking for a sound that is not adapted to today's parameters and for an answer to the question of expression that is far removed from the vision of the 19th and early 20th centuries."

Even more than the choice of instrument, his couplings shed a uniquely illuminating light on these familiar pieces. Giovanni Sollima has compiled a kind of reception history of the cello suites in sound form. It includes Alfredo Piatti's late Romantic arrangement of the Gigue from the First Suite for cello and piano, as well as Robert Schumann's earlier transcription of the Gigue from the Third Suite. In the early 20th century, Luigi Forino arranged the Prelude to the Fourth Suite for cello quartet; then Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco arranged the entire Sixth Suite for solo cello and strings. Often these arrangements draw out the implicit harmonies from Bach's solo lines and do so as a bridge between Bach's own world and their own later sensibilities.

Such creative responses to Bach are almost entirely unknown and unrecorded, making Giovanni Sollima's New Testament of Bach a uniquely rewarding experience. He has added several short modern reflections for solo cello, by Steve Hackett, Pancho Ragonese, Umberto Pedraglio and himself. This brings the history of the solo cello and Bach's masterpieces full circle.

- Bach's iconic solo suites represent the pinnacle of the entire cello repertoire, the ultimate challenge and a Mount Everest that every cellist must climb, no matter how many times it has been done.
- The Italian cellist Giovanni Sollima has lived his entire musical life with the cello suites. The pandemic, the suspended time, the need to search for the essence of the music came and with it the need to record it. "After a few months, I asked myself: 'Will they be ready?' They weren't, they aren't and they won't be ... they change every day, your body changes, your breathing, your reaction times."
- Giovanni Sollima's recording of the cello suites is a very personal statement in which the message of the music takes center stage, the message of eternity, beauty and humanity.
- Giovanni Sollima is one of the most original and important musicians of his time. He has performed with Riccardo Muti, Yo-Yo Ma, Ivan Fischer, Viktoria Mullova, Ruggero Raimondi, Yuri Bashmet, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Giovanni Antonini, Ottavio Dantone, Stefano Bollani and with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the Berlin Konzerthausorchester, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico, the Accademia Bizantina, the Holland Baroque Society and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.